Testing and conformance within distributed systems

The objective of open distributed processing (ODP) is to support the construction of distributed systems in a multi-vendor environment through the provision of an architectural framework that such systems must adhere to. However, without a means to assess conformance the value of this architecture is limited. The paper describes a conformance assessment methodology suitable for open distributed processing, this methodology includes both testing and specification checking. We also discuss the scope of the methodology, which can be seen to support both de jure and de facto standards